


and grace is just the measure of a fall

by jencat



Series: I may know the word, but not say it [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, It's super angsty but not super sad like the stupid show, So much angst, So much talking, Stream of Consciousness, Talking, because 8.04 is even more awful the more time passes, brienne being awesome as always, but she is stuck with him, i love the boy but occasionally also want to smack him for being a noble dummy, jaime being the stupidest lannister, quite possibly, really what did she do to get stuck with this dude sometimes I don't even know, the consequences of trying to fix 8.04, very vague allusions to suicidal ideation, which i am unsurprisingly still mad about
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-09-23 16:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20342968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jencat/pseuds/jencat
Summary: It takes time, to not leave Winterfell.This is what comes of handing someone a knife and baring your throat in trust.***Sequel to an 8.04 fix-itas though it were your own vanishing songBrienne may have stopped him leaving, but there's absolutely nothing simple about Jaime staying.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a much longer sequel set immediately following _ [as though it were your own vanishing song](http://archiveofourown.org/works/18882286) _, which was one of my favourite things ever to write and was relatively quick. This one has.. not been quick. Or easy. It probably helps to have read the first one. And I need to post the first part now so that I can stop messing around with it after three entire months :-)
> 
> Title (and quote) is from Northbound 35 by Jeffrey Foucault

_You were as much in my hands_  
_As water or darkness or nothing_  
_Can ever be held_  
**Northbound 35 - Jeffrey Foucault**

It takes time, to not leave Winterfell.

There are sleepy, curious stable boys to deal with, and food to be sent for from the kitchens in the middle of the night. Jaime blinks and he's shivering on a chair by the fire in their chambers; Brienne moving in an indignant silence around the room, the sleeves of her robe pushed back and a high color still on her cheeks. He thinks she can forgive many things, but asking all these things in the small hours, of people more accustomed to seeing her in plate, at Sansa's side-- he understands that must feel far worse, to her mind, than facing down the dead. At least the dead do not whisper and gossip, and carry everything back to Sansa; make her question her judgement more than she already does herself.

He reaches to catch at her hand as she moves past again, and she stills beside him abruptly with a shuddering breath; head bowed, eyes closed.

When he pulls her, hesitantly, toward the other chair, she makes no move to follow. Her fingers tighten against his, and he swallows against the familiarity of it; the feel of sword callous and blunt nails curling against the meat of his palm--

He draws her hand up; presses a kiss-- _a thanks, a question--_ and she pulls away sharply; reproach plain on her face. He's pushed her too far and far enough this night already, and Brienne has her limits.

She gathers her robe about her -- still spattered with the courtyard mud, and snow-- and steps around him neatly to take the other chair; sits tall with her arms curled around herself, the only true armor she's allowed herself lately around him. He thinks she might regret that now. He thinks about his good arm curled around her waist, heavy with sleep.

"I meant what I said before. I'd not stop you leaving if I thought--" She holds herself stiffly, like she's expecting a blow; and his chest tightens. This is what comes of handing someone a knife and baring your throat in trust. He's a Lannister, and he thinks he never knew how not to take advantage. He wonders if he even did.

She looks back up at him, and his heart's in his throat again. "I wouldn't stop you if I knew you were thinking clearly. But, Jaime-- you weren't making much sense," The last words in that same tone she once whispered _jealous_ in, weeks ago: a half-asked question, insisting it was not a game; and it's still not a game now. He understands that much.

He looks away from her, into the flames, and the flames look back into him; and he's still shaking somehow. There's still enough of him left to shake, and to look away from her when she tries to ask.

"_Jaime."_ Sharp, and quiet, and he thinks he never heard her say his name like that before these last few weeks, and now he can't remember what it's like to not hear it. "What is it that you're trying to do, here - make me _bid_ you leave? Because you'd have to do better than that pitiful list of half-truths."

She leans forward slightly, and he tries to remember to breath when he looks back up at her, still not quite meeting her eyes. There seems too much of the firelight in them for the moment.

"Do you just forget I actually know the truth of it? That I've heard every terrible thing already, and I'm still here. That you _wanted_ me to hear the truth of it; wanted me to keep your secrets. I knew the truth of it when I swore to you about finding Sansa and Arya, and I knew it when I asked you to bring an army North - _you_ know that. And I knew it when I vouched for you in front of the fucking Dragon Queen. I swore you were honorable, knowing all these things. And you _let me_."

He thinks of all the other choices he has let her make; the ones that cut sharp as steel in the light of him leaving her sleeping. The fire is warm and the night is dark, but the poison's still seeping in, ever closer, the longer he tarries. So he closes his eyes and says, quietly, "Then it seems I've been nothing but dishonorable to you, here."

He looks up at her, then, and knows she sees something of it on his face. It's regret, sure enough, he thinks -- but not in the way she would understand it. He sees the implication flare fury in her eyes.

"Oh, don't you bloody _dare_\-- I didn't vouch for you to preserve your _honor,_ or mine_. _ I did it to save your fucking _life."_ She sits back, her face suddenly red in the firelight. "I only ever wanted you to survive this, somehow. And I can't help but think now you mean to die, somehow, in all of this."

She stops abruptly, closes her eyes. Her voice is softer; colder, now. "And you know, don't you? The only cost in the end now will be _my_ reputation; _my_ honor. All for nothing, as you're so determined to throw your life away."

His mind skitters over that part; that _cost. _ They have never been overt about what is happening here until tonight - there is only so much public opinion Brienne can suffer, and the secrecy is as natural as breathing to his mind - but he had thought; had _hoped_ that it would be enough to spare her the worst of it once that first night had passed; once he had abandoned his own bed here quite entirely. Deep down, though, it should have been obvious even to his own distracted attention that a household such as Winterfell would observe such things, even the once.

Ah. _Once. Once_ would be a mere misstep. He could have slipped, once -- and yet he never has, before, not once. And it's been a fair few more times than _once_ now; it's been weeks of it, golden and honeyed and warm even as they're in the heart of winter here. Far more than he deserves, and he has been elated, and terrified, and he hasn't honestly regretted a moment, save that they're tangled up in this, now, and he still doesn't see a way to stay here, with her, that doesn't end even worse.

"Brienne--" He thinks he hasn't seen her this furious and disdainful since the dragonpit, and he deserves it entirely now for this deceit; for making her think it ever meant any less to him. He always was a miserable liar underneath it all.

"_Don't."_ She says, flatly, again. "I'm not talking about that part. That part was _my_ honor, to do with as I choose. You don't get to cast it any more or less honorable if I decide that. And I _did_ decide that, knowing what I knew."

He almost smiles, at that. "What was it, then, this thing you knew?"

And the look on her face makes him suddenly glad their swords are nowhere within easy reach. It's a cruel, easy trick, and it's one he wields altogether too well.

She swallows, and the sense that he's scored a blow is a knot in his gut even before he hears it catch in her voice. "I knew I made my choices, and they were _mine_. Whether I made some of them in the light of what happened-- That's another thing entirely. But I'll not sit here and beg you to stay because of _that_. Not again."

He thinks he has a retort, for that, but the words stick in his throat, and all he feels is his heart racing in his chest; all he hears is the sound of her breathing far more quickly than a mere conversation should warrant.

There's a hesitant tap at the door in the silence, and Brienne mutters _gods_ under her breath as she rises abruptly from the chair, anger in every line of her, moving into the shadows away from the fire.

He sits by the fire, in that small circle of warm, unsteady light in the darkness, and he wonders if she really means that, about not asking him to stay, now; whether his pretence of carelessness at her feelings has achieved his aim. And he remembers the last time he rode south from here truly, years past, at Cersei's side and having set a fire with Bran Stark broken behind them, again, for the war, this other war, that had scorched every kingdom to ashes already, no matter what the dead had wanted. They'd left another boy cut to pieces along the way back then, and Sansa Stark's wolf dead by her father's reluctant hand, all before the real slaughter even began. They hadn't needed the dead to break them at all in the end, they had been doing a perfectly fine job of it for years now, in all their cruelty and carelessness--

\--And then there's the press of a cup into his hand, warm with the scent of salt and meat, and cutting through his spiralling thoughts quick as a knife.

He thinks of all the things he has done in the service of family and the service of war, and he cannot even say if he is at war now.

It might be easier if he were.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the chapter count has just gone up a tad (almost entirely due to people leaving amazingly lovely comments, because this fic had been making me miserable for months up til I starting posting it)... with the caveat the next update will be a while away because life is going to descend on me with a vengeance as of tomorrow :-)

"Will you just bloody eat something, please." Her face is carefully still when he looks, the words carefully enunciated, but mostly she just sounds..._tired_, he thinks. As tired as he is, of trying to parse the way the world has fallen, this particular night.

And, oh, she _sounds_ like someone has woken her in the middle of the night and betrayed all the trust she ever placed in them. That, too. He can still feel her hands, folding his around the cup, warm and graceful in their strength, keeping her word exactly as she said she would.

It's good broth, heavy and thick. It almost feels like conceding some point, to actually sup it, but Brienne is just there, watching with tired concern rather than anything like triumph, and he forgets, _he forgets,_ that she's asking something else entirely.

She draws her robe closer around her as she takes the other chair again. He thinks maybe she's moving slower, more carefully now; the shivery panic and anger of earlier wearing down as the night wears on. He thinks he might be wearing her patience thin, at last, and says, huskily, "Thank you."

She scrubs a hand tiredly across her face and gestures at the side table. "There's bread, too." And he nods, mouth full. More hungry than he has been in days, but wary, somehow, at indulging it.

It's the silence that makes him look back up again; catch her looking at him with faint consternation. "For-- _gods--_ you know I'd do this much for anyone-- for any _friend,_ don't you? And Jaime, you were my friend for a lot longer than you've been sharing my bed."

The shame twists in him deeper than he anticipated. He chokes down a bite and remembers her holding him upright outside; how determined she always is not to let him fall. Remembers cutting his way back to her across a battlement when the dead came rushing in. "I know; I do know."

She takes a breath, nods like she's vaguely reassured as she leans back into the chair. He'd almost think she were more at ease, but for her hands twisting restlessly across her lap, drawing his eye. When she speaks, her voice is low and taut.

"You really want to sit there and call yourself hateful? I've known hateful men, Jaime; I've known them all my life." She tilts her head, almost smiles with no mirth in it at all. "Hateful people."

Another mouthful of food, and he swallows, and sees a kind of awful challenge in her eyes.

"And there's the thing: I've never known a one who stood there and listed off their own terrible deeds, or ever called _themselves_ hateful, because they all truly believe they have the right of it. That what _they_ do is justified and necessary, and not terrible at all." She takes a long breath, and he hears something like pain in it; like she's inhaling against a cracked rib. There's a tightness in his throat he can't quite swallow past. "You know how it is for them. That anyone else who suffers for it is merely a cost to set against the way the world works."

He sets the cup down before he spills it; fingers numb even in the warmth of the fire. "That _is_ the way the world works."

She sits taller, and he knows precisely what it looks like when she's squaring up for battle. "It doesn't have to be. Every honorable thing I know you ever did says _it doesn't have to be._"

There's something pure and obstinate in the set of her mouth, and he watches the firelight flicker against the lines of her throat; the corded strength under pale skin lit golden. The claw marks gouged across her collarbone never made it up so high as the neck of her robe but he knows precisely how they look in this light, just as he knows the feel of them beneath his mouth; beneath the pads of his fingers tracing slowly down.

She stares at him and she says, wonderingly, into the silence stretching between them, "You still think it's the end of the world, don't you?", and he can only look at her. She half-shakes her head, and he's not even sure if it's with disbelief. "It's many things, but it's not that yet. I promise you."

It's almost too warm, this near to the fire. The air feels close; he can't quite catch his breath, "It is, though," he tells her. "You just can't see it yet."

"I know _exactly_ what it is I see." she says-- But her voice breaks somewhere in the middle of it, and he's undone, entirely, at the look in her eyes, liquid in the firelight. She forgot herself for a moment there, he thinks, and he finally understood the depth of it -- how far she still believes in him; in someone so wholly undeserving of her faith.

She takes a sharp breath, and swallows down the shine in her eyes, but it's too late now. He already saw what he never quite let himself see before, and it already stole the rest of his breath away.

He wonders if it outweighs the part of himself that always thought he knew who he was with Cersei, and if that would be enough to make his heart quiet, at last.

"There's a child," he says, helplessly, and watches something he can't quite place cross her face. Not surprise, exactly; more resignation, or almost relief. It makes something tighten in his chest.

Her voice is steadier than he expects; steel beneath it all. "You might have wanted to begin with that part, out there in the snow."

"You knew?" He can barely hear his own voice; the fire seems loud, suddenly, in the dark and the quiet.

Brienne regards him for a moment, like she's trying to weigh something up. "Your brother."

He frowns, tries to picture Tyrion being quite so bold about it before he left for the south, and she sighs; relents. "He told Sansa. All of it. He wanted to be sure she was safe, and you know well enough that was the only thing _I_ ever swore, to Catelyn, and to her-- And to you. That I would make sure she would be safe."

"And as I didn't tell you any of it, before." He feels light-headed. The sense of a secret broken open still has the power to sicken him, after all these years, all these secrets.

She inclines her head. "He didn't seem quite sure--" She bites off the words; looks at him, her eyes wide and barely even blue in the firelight. "Of late, whether there even was a child."

He barely catches the words, quiet as they are; feels them barely hit home. Rumor, and gossip, and half a suggestion at a remove from Tyrion barely makes for reliable news these days, but still--

It still feels like something that could be true; like it could be another step toward a crumbling parapet. He'd already walked away believing Cersei to be telling true about that part, even as the balance between them veered sickeningly out of kilter, and she'd played the game and sent Bronn running after them; just another step in another dance. He hadn't taken it _seriously_, and it comes back to him now, the faint edge of panic in his brother's voice beneath the mocking veneer, bribing their sellsword of old to point a crossbow somewhere other than at them. That he had no way of telling where else Cersei might direct her wrath next, and that Tyrion had been _worried_. That he still had had things in the world he was loathe to risk like that, even outside of the Hand's pin, and the Mother of Dragons.

He thinks about what he might have risked himself, for the sake of a promise; a shadow; for what could be a falsehood. He thinks about leaving, again, to at least try to shake the truth from his sweet snake of a sister; and even as he thinks it, he knows it would be risking everything again for aught; for dust. For ashes, in the end, he thinks.

He doesn't know, though, what he would be risking. He isn't even nearly sure what he's lost already, here in this room, by this fire.


	3. Chapter 3

"Jaime?"

He opens his eyes – in truth, he doesn't remember _closing_ them – and blinks through a moment of dull confusion in the dim light before he looks up at her. Beyond the mazy remnants of dozing, he feels more himself than he has in days– and it's the food, and the fire; his name on her lips, her voice husky with fatigue. He wonders if she's been watching him sleep.

"Go to bed, Jaime." She's looking at the fire as she speaks; not at him, and certainly not at the bed he left her in, hours past. The furs catch the light every often, in the darkness away from the hearth; still in disarray. He had disentangled himself carefully, considering how little he had been thinking at the time; had left everything just as it had been. The fire, the furs, Brienne sleeping–

He thinks of the sound she made earlier, when he'd kissed her; when he'd been gasping against her mouth with something approaching desperation.

The bed is not as he left it, earlier; the furs had been tossed back in haste; almost in panic. If he thinks too long on it, he can see the way she woke, alone in the dark and reaching for him. She does that sometimes, he remembers, in that moment before she's truly awake; in a way she won't let herself later. He's spent enough early mornings awake, watching all he can see of the lines of her face; awaiting the hesitant brush of her hand across whichever part of him is closest.

He can see the way she woke tonight, and reached across an empty bed–

–and something like a wash of grief has him by the throat.

She hears his breath catch; looks up from the flames with her lips pressed tight. "I really don't recommend trying to sleep in these chairs. Go on, go to bed."

The bed is a patch of darkness behind them, and he looks back at her face in the firelight, drawn and pale. "What about you?"

Her mouth twists. "What _about _me? I said to you, outside– You eat something, and you get some sleep, and you do as you will in the morning." Her voice doesn't quite falter, at the end. He's almost sure.

She takes a breath, and levels something like a glare at him. "But you tell Sansa yourself – and then _you_ deal with everything else that comes after."

He almost bites back a smile at that; at the conviction; the vehemence. "I fear your lady may not let me, if she knew. I'm half a hostage here already in truth, and I daresay Tyrion bid her– "

There's a sudden flare of movement, the scuff of boots against the flagstones; and the other chair is empty. He can see her, stilled just beyond where the firelight reaches; standing poised to flee somewhere; anywhere away from him–

And yet somehow still here. She's facing away from him; just the gleam of her skin in the darkness – a sliver of her face in profile; one arm outstretched and the long lines of her hand wrapped taut and bloodless around the top of the chair. Like she's caught herself in flight; like she's trying to make herself stay there in the dark with him.

"That city _will still burn._ And you won't survive it." There's an awful rasp in her voice now; a grief so raw it stops the next words in his throat, and he swallows.

He knows this; he _knows _and yet King's Landing suddenly seems a long way away and a long time ago. He closes his eyes and the city burns like it never did when he killed Aerys. He opens them and the city is still standing, and Cersei is still watching over it from the Keep – hungry; possessive – and there is still a child. As long as he stays here, in the firelight, all these things are true.

He stands up; steps out into the shadows until he's just close enough to see her expression in the low light, and he thinks he doesn't believe that any of those things are really true any more.

He thinks the only true thing left in the world is standing before him now, and he has done nothing so much lately as try to break her of it.

Brienne looks at him, a little wide-eyed still at her own vehemence. She's still so careful, with the truth. With those secrets people entrust to her. She wants so badly to keep the trust that has been placed in her, and she never did have any real skill at dissembling. He thought, once, it would make the world easier for her, if she learned how to be false about it like the rest of them. He understands now that it's the world that needs to bend itself to Brienne's strength; that it is a strength, and an honest one at that – to be true when everyone around you insists on falsehood; abides by it.

"I didn't tell you about the child, in the first place." he says again, and she looks at him with a kind of wary sadness; like she's trying not to hurt him any more than she already has, and isn't _that_ the irony when he's already gone for every weak point he could think of.

She says, almost gently– "We don't _talk_, Jaime. Not about things like that. We train together and eat together and sleep together, but we are _so careful_ not to talk, aren't we?"

He wants to argue that part – because that part never changed; the affectionate barbs and the half-meant complaints about nothing in particular. Things are as they are; as they have always been the moment they are together for any amount of time: that they speak constantly, of things that skitter the surface and rarely break.

And then there's this sadness he can't quite parse for a moment – at her comfort with that small distance, too. For each of them to think they could speak with steel and bedplay about things that matter, and miss the part where words would just have cut them deeper.

For he knows, marrow deep, that she has more than had her fill of being cut with words over the years; that this has been some respite despite all the sorrows still crowding in.

And that he has just stripped even that small mercy from her tonight without even thinking.

He takes a shuddering breath; watches the fingers he has left flex in the firelight and says hesitantly, "But we are talking, now."

She shakes her head, ventures a tight smile. "Because you were leaving. Because it's the middle of the bloody night. Because it feels like if I stop for a moment, I'll look up and you'll be gone, and that will be it. The end of it all. Is this the end of it, now? Are we done?"

"We'll never be done." He says it softly; resolute. Without thinking, because it's the only answer there ever was. He hears the sharp breath she takes, and isn't even surprised to find it true.

There's a moment where everything stops, where she still looks at him; still breathing too fast; unsteady–

And then she looks away; eyes closed for a moment like she can't bear to do this any longer. He thinks perhaps he never really understood what it was to hunger, before.

Brienne opens her eyes, and they look no color at all this far from the light. "You should sleep. This is– I don't know why I'm even still standing here talking at you. For what? If I keep you talking this whole long night, you'd stay? It's the North; the sun rises so late here already, and it's cold and I'm _tired_."

For a moment he remembers her cradling his face in the courtyard, her hands warm against the night; how much that must have cost her. He's set a wall between them now, unthinking and unbidden, and for a moment he can only think of how much he regrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to [ languageintostillair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/languageintostillair/pseuds/languageintostillair) for very kindly taking a look and making me finally post this chapter :-)

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly only started writing this series because way back in the week after 8.04 aired, my yoga teacher said something about "are there any narratives you can't let go of" (aka stop bloody thinking about them, because yoga) and my brain immediately went YES IT HAS BEEN BUGGING ME IMMENSELY THAT BRIENNE DIDN'T PHYSICALLY STOP THAT IDIOT FROM LEAVING WINTERFELL AS HE LITERALLY LOOKED LIKE HE WAS ABOUT TO FALL OVER.  
...so then there was fix-it fic?


End file.
